We’ve never envied the organized Left for their legions of street protestors and activist schemers. But, we do feel a pang of jealousy when we confront the multitude of organized special interest or single-issue groups loosely-affiliated with the American progressive movement and Democrat party.

Hundreds of special interest groups like the Sierra Club, National Organization for Women, and the ACLU join organized labor as the most powerful weapons the organized Left has. They build large memberships and raise considerable amounts of money. More importantly, they work effectively to keep liberal politicians obedient at all levels of government –from your local planning commission to the White House.

The Right has tasted similar success with the National Rifleman’s Association (NRA), which is by far the largest single-issue organized interest group aligned with the conservative movement that we know of. Wayne LaPierre and his team are extremely succesful in keeping Republican politicians who live in areas where polling shows their constituents might be open to further regulations of firearms opposed to increased gun control. Furthermore, they count their membership numbers in the millions and raise considerable sums of money.

The reality is that these so-called “single issue” or “special” interest groups don’t really operate exclusively within the realm of their stated single purpose. The ACLU might attract young people interested in preserving civil liberties, but the material they produce and the organizational culture they have created quickly transform their more moderate inductees into Christian-bashing proponents eager to win the War on Terror by ending aggresive interrogation. The Sierra Club brings in people who are interested in hiking and preserving national parks and makes them a force of irrational extremism for any local developer who wants to build homes in a community to deal with.

General interest conservative groups, on the other hand, have been formed with the intention of building large coalitions of people who share consistent concerns regarding a wide range of issues. This has worked and there’s no reason to stop, but there are some downsides.

First, idealogical consistency across a wide range of issues is a difficult concept to base an organization around. It breeds in-fighting and discussions about idealogical purity. A simple Google search will reveal numerous libertarian groups formed primarily to distinguish themselves from other proponents of free minds and free markets. Second, when a new issue comes along, general organizations often find themselves paralyzed by a membership that is no longer aligned in their interests or beliefs. Half the conservatives in the ACU might favor applying principles from the parent’s rights movement to the Elian Gonzalez case whereas the other half might be all-revved-up to defend the boy’s rights against Fidel Castro and the horrors of communism. This splintering weakens the organization.

Most importantly, though, the reason why I envy the Left’s success in the arena of interest groups is that it aligns well with internet marketing and new media. The simple fact of the matter is that old media was about mass audiences and messages broadcast to the undifferentiated masses, but new media involves presentations geared to niches. A general group that appeals only superficially and in the abstract to millions will be less successful in this environment than a specific group that appeals deeply and personally to a specific niche of people interested in a single subject.

Right now, the tea party movement is a broad-based coaltion of people generally opposed to big government, excessive spending, and Team Obama. Republicans may not live in fear that the Tea Party crowd will vote them out for running deficits during the Bush boom years. Democrats have little to fear because they know that virtually no one in their political base attends tea parties. However, we believe that both Rs and Ds would feel the pain of voting contrary to an organized single issue “internet freedom” movement that may appeal effectively to people within their base and bloody them with weaponry much more difficult to defend against than partisan attacks from opponents clearly aligned with the other party.

For that reason, our forthcomming relaunch of Daily Uprising will be as a home for conservative and libertarians interested in “online advocacy” rather than simply a relaunch of our blog on the subject. We’ll provide any conservative or libertarian with a home to blog, tutorials, and a network of fellow compatriots to assist them in online gamesmanship. Our blog won’t go away, but we will be opening up the system to give other writers and online activists a chance to contribute to the uprising.

If you are involved in the formation of niched interest groups that might appeal to conservative and libertarian audiences online, we’d love to hear from you. There are so many single issues that are ripe for niche organizational development and so few outstanding organizations in these areas. We’d love to see and support your work in building the future of conservative “special interest” groups and feature them as rebellion resources.

In her book on the Great Depression, The Forgotten Man, Amity Shlaes argues that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt plunged the country into a depression within a depression in 1937 and 1938 through endless legislative “accomplishments” that caused investors craving stability to hunker down and wonder if they were going to be next to suffer the costs of legislative experimentation. The predicted recovery that should have occurred, Shlaes believes, was stifled not just by the legislation, but by the relentlessness with which Roosevelt pursued his ambitious agenda. Shlaes says of Roosevelt’s drive to intervene:

“Such forays prevented recovery and took the country into the depression within the Depression of 1937 and 1938… One of the most famous Roosevelt phrases in history, almost as famous as “fear itself,” was Roosevelt’s boast that he would promulgate “bold, persistent experimentation.” But Roosevelt’s commitment to experimentation itself created fear… The trouble, however, was not merely the new policies that were implemented, but also the threat of additional, unknown, policies. Fear froze the economy, but that uncertainty itself might have a cost was something the young experimenters simply did not consider.”

As Obama’s economic team considers very real concerns that their Neo-Keynsian experimentation is likely to lead to inflation or stagflation, they should learn from history and also consider the cost of rampant, unpredictable change that Shlaes describes. President Obama’s first few months in office proved to small businessmen across the country that almost any cost can be imposed under an Obama administration. As these small business owners consider how they will survive under cap-and-trade and looming health care reform measures, they also may be asking themselves, “Even if we can survive with this additional burden, can we make it through what the government will decide to do next?” Who would decide to expand and grow their business in an environment that could very well turn poisonous tomorrow.

Just as Roosevelt’s men did during the Great Depression, Obama’s men are insisting that the problem is not that the stimulus bill that Democratic lobbyists pieced together like Frankenstein’s monster has failed to work, but that their understanding of the depth of the recession was flawed. If they knew how bad the depression truly was, their predictions for stimulus success would have been more modest, but that doesn’t mean the stimulus didn’t work. On the contrary, they insist, think how bad things would be if there was no stimulus. This convenient reasoning allows Obama to name his own goals and then declare success regardless of whether he meets them.

There are two things that almost any modern President with the exception of Roosevelt would probably do when confronted with the tenacity of the recession: First, they would seek to create an economic and political environment of stability to calm investors at home and the world over and convince them that the United States is a safe and smart place to do business and not a laboratory for governmental experimentation. Second, they would announce a definite and certain intent and the framework for a plan for a return to fiscal responsibility, for reducing the national debt, and avoiding the inflation or stagflation that many investors and businessmen openly fear. Instead, President Obama and his team have taken the opposite approach, hanging on to their mandate for “change” and defending the efficacy of their stimulus legislation by discounting their ability to form predictions on a careful and sound reading of economic indicators.

The true cost of risky and controversial governmental “change” must include not only the growing tab on spending, but also the paralysis inflicted upon risk-averse, conservative investors and businesspeople. Before sending the signal that he would sign a second “stimulus” to distribute funds to large corporations and democratic-friendly industries, President Obama needs to convince investors and businesspeople that he understands their need for a stable legislative environment and that he can pay for the second stimulus without massive penalties, sales taxes, or the creation of a USA VAT. If he cannot convince investors and businesspeople, who remain the economic engine of the United States’ economy, he should veto the bill. It’s not a political necessity, but it is what good leadership in an economic downturn requires.